Remembering Ancient Wisdom

I’ve always known being around animals made me feel better. Anyone who knows me very well at all knows of my menagerie — horses, dogs, cat, bird, rabbit.

If I had more space I’d fill it with more of each — with the addition of llamas, donkeys and cows. I love to watch animals interact with one another (for the most part, that is. I do not like to watch one gnaw on another, for sport or survival — that’s where I draw the line), and I like to interact with them and try to learn whatever it is they have to teach me.

As author and life coach Martha Beck reminds us, it was Albert Einstein who said that human beings experience themselves as something separate from the rest, a kind of “optical delusion” of our consciousness. Our task of freeing ourselves from this self-imposed prison, Einstein tells us, is to widen the circle of our compassion to include — and embrace — all living creatures and the whole of nature.”

In Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, Beck says that as we practice Oneness with animals, our body and mind will grow calmer, peaceful and more content. Our instincts will sharpen, enabling us to feel our way through situations and relationships of baffling complexity. And more than anything, this Oneness will remind us of what we all already know in the most ancient parts of our being.

Or, As Meister Eckhart put it:

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field,

When I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing . . .

there was nothing

I could not

love

How can you connect more and practice oneness with nature — and then take that ancient wisdom back into your relationships with people? Do you have a story about this to tell? Post it here or email me and let’s discuss it! If you can’t find me, don’t worry — I’ll be back. I’m probably off somewhere talking to a squirrel.